May 7, 2017

Renovations to Grad-Only Housing Complex Set for August 2018 Completion

Construction is underway at the future Maplewood Apartments complex after Cornell officials and developers symbolically broke ground at the site Friday afternoon.

The complex will be exclusively available for Cornell graduate and professional students.

The original Maplewood Apartments, built in 1989, was demolished last winter amid plans for reconstruction. The former complex had capacity for 360 beds, though was built of “poor quality” with an anticipated “short life span,” Ithaca local Tessa Rudan ’89 previously told The Sun.

Construction for the new complex is expected to be completed in August 2018.

The developer and manager of the site, Education Realty Trust (EdR), has led the redevelopment project with collaboration from the University. Nathaniel Rogers, grad, president of Cornell Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, lauded the developer and the University for their inclusion of input from graduate students at the ceremony on Friday.

“Graduate and professional students were invited to participate early in the design stage and set many of the original goals that made their way into the final plan,” Rogers said. “I want to especially thank Jeremy Thomas, Senior Director of Cornell Real Estate. Jeremy has done an excellent job of keeping graduate and professional students not just informed of what was going on, but has made us actual partners in this project.”

Cornell currently has capacity for only four percent of its graduate and professional students on campus, forcing the rest to seek housing in Ithaca, according to a resolution passed by the GPSA in September.

The new complex is expected to house 872 new beds in 442 units of apartments including studio units and one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments and townhouses, according to a presentation by Jeffrey Resecto, vice president of EdR, at a recent GPSA meeting.

Resecto also estimated that rent would be approximately $914 per person, including utilities.

Noting how “excited the graduate and professional student community is to see the Maplewood redevelopment project come to fruition,” Rogers added at the ceremony that he believes “Maplewood will be the gold standard by which the GPSA will measure its future collaborations with the Cornell administration and outside partners like EdR.”

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Anna Delwiche is a member of the Class of 2019 in the College of Arts & Sciences. She is a Senior Editor on the 136th Editorial Board and was a News Editor on the 135th. Delwiche can be reached at adelwiche@cornellsun.com.